Indoor quilt, outdoor Briggs & Stratton

January 22, 2019

Gunther within the hall of snow.Stairway quilt.

January 20, 2019

Our son Bob, his wife Heather, and daughter Olivia—and puppy Velma—are moved into their new house in Billings, a cool 1960s-style horizontal wooden house with flat roof and floor-to-ceiling windows in their front room that looks out on their monstrous back yard that I’d hate to mow. Maybe they will raise lentils, or something. Bob is big and strong, maybe he’ll mow it with a push mower.

I love the wooden walls in their front room and kitchen. Reminds me of my Aunt Corinne’s house in Seattle, the one that looked out onto Puget Sound. Couple days ago I helped Bob fix some pig wire to contain Velma and prevent her from making an end run around to the front of the house. Last I heard Velma loves the yard, but is learning to escape the fence.

It snowed about 8 inches yesterday, so I fired up my new 24” Briggs and Stratton snow thrower and carved out a path from one end of our block to the other, then halfway up the east side. I ran the machine again today, taking cutting out some of the deep snow on the street for parking. I love doing it. I’m also getting better at it. My first few attempts with the machine got lousy crooked results, but I’m making a straighter path now.

This morning I got Gunther up before seven. Thanks to my neighbors who dug out their sidewalks, I was able to walk the dog without a leash. Like being in a hall with walls of snow, I needed to keep Gunther ahead of me, stopping so he could pee on some snow here and there, sniff a fence, like that. As long as he was ahead of me he kept out of mischief.

The house on the west end of the block that had the angry, troubled guy I called “Jerry” who screamed obscenities, was vacant this morning. A side window, presumably broken in one of his rages, was boarded over with thin plywood. I don’t know what happened to Jerry or his mother, but I could see in the front window a vacant room, lit by a lone lightbulb. I guess the agency that manages the property sent someone to board the window and they left a light on. I wonder how they are faring?

Gunther and I walked past to the corner where the Hispanic neighbors were getting in a van. I picked Gunther up and held him under my arm. The little girl who likes Gunther had her hair in neat braids. She always used to ask to pet Gunther, but P. and I agreed that because G. sometimes nips at kids, we should tell the girl that G. is a “bad dog.” Nonetheless, the girl grinned when she saw me carrying Gunther, but didn’t say anything. I howdy’d the mom who wished me a good morning as she fussed with something in the van. They were up early. Like me.

I lit a fire in our stove at home. Yesterday, P. invented a quilt to stretch over the top of the open stairway to our unheated upstairs. It stretches horizontally, stapled to a board that wedges between wall and railing, over a supporting board, to another board laying across the top of the stairs that also is wedged firmly at its ends. Got the picture? It looks like it will keep the first floor warmer, although the forced air furnace ran and ran this morning, even though it was only about 26 degrees out.

Gunther sits on my shoulder and on the back of my chair while I write. I hope to find the sweet places to write from, those hippie times that troubled me with fears about straight society. As I recall, I didn’t fear having nowhere to live or nothing to eat in those days. I suppose I should have. I was afraid of Vietnam. I knew I could handle being in the military, after all, I’d heard it wasn’t as bad as football practice. I wasn’t any good at football, but I stayed with it all through high school, sitting on the bench for games. I enjoyed practice.

Some of my friends are writers, successful ones. I think their secret is their perseverance, their consistent, hard work. Plus, they enjoy telling stories, like I did before I became so deeply depressed.

I owe my life to my psychiatrist and the medicines he prescribed, but they had mild side effects. All medicines have side effects, and considering the potentially lethal effects from depression, I’d say the medicines caused mild inconvenience only. Still, I’m glad Dr. Stiles tapered me off the psych meds because now I feel sharper and I have more insight into the nature of depression, the illness. I’m thinking I can take up writing, once again.